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Kindle Fire gets root access

Bug, feature, or ‘don’t really care’?

You’d have to think that Amazon doesn’t really care whether people give themselves root access to its e-readers, since the Kindle Fire has been “rooted” two days post-launch.

A post to the XDA Developer forum signed death2all110 demonstrates that someone using the Android Debug Bridge and SuperOneClick 2.2 can get root access to the Kindle Fire.

It’s also necessary to have installed and used the ADB SDK, the post states, after which the adb_usb.ini file needs to have the 0x1949 address added.

By editing the USB driver info file, android_winusb.inf, allowing installation of apps from unknown sources, and killing the ADB server, a user can install SuperOneClick. After that, all that’s needed is to run the software to select the “root” option.

As one comment to the post observed, the Kindle is easy to root as well, which makes one wonder whether Amazon is particularly worried about how people treat their readers after purchase, irrespective of the company’s official statements.

With root access enabled, all that’s required to side-load Android apps from the USB is to enable the USB in ADB – running “adb devices” – and then load the package’s .apk file by running “adb install <app>.apk”. ®